“I did.” Ada's answer was steady, but shame reddened her cheeks. “I told Sheriff Pike what I had seen. He wrote down that Samuel had been confused and agitated. When I protested, he threatened to have my employer dismiss me for spreading false accusations. My mother was ill. I could not afford to lose the position.”
Mara had imagined courage as a door that was either opened or closed. Now she saw the locks poverty could place upon it. She wanted to condemn Ada, yet the woman's careful preservation of these papers had taken a different kind of nerve.
“Why speak now?”
“Because my mother died in May. Because I am tired of letting men with money decide which facts deserve to exist. And because yesterday a stranger asked for the original register.”
Ada showed her a page torn from the office's old message book. The stranger had called himself Mercer. He wore a gray coat, carried a silver-headed cane, and had offered fifty dollars for the book. When Ada refused, he had smiled and said that paper was unusually flammable in dry weather.
Mara pictured the schoolhouse fire. “Where is the register?”
“Not here. I moved it.” Ada took her coat from a peg. “Come with me, and keep your eyes on the windows.”
They left through the rear door and crossed an alley crowded with empty barrels. Ada led her into a boardinghouse where a stout widow named Mrs. Bellamy was kneading bread. Without asking questions, the widow lifted a flour tin from a shelf and removed a packet wrapped in oilcloth. Ada unfastened the string. The book inside was scarred along its spine but intact.
Mara turned the pages slowly. The telegram Samuel had sent on the last day of his life was recorded in plain black ink. Its destination was the territorial land office. Its message was short: REQUEST IMMEDIATE REVIEW OF ALTERED WATER SURVEY STOP ORIGINAL BENCHMARKS DO NOT MATCH CROWES MAP STOP WILL BRING WITNESS.
“Who was the witness?” Mara asked.
Ada shook her head. “He never gave me a name. But someone answered the message before it could be transmitted.”
On the facing page was a penciled instruction: HOLD FOR VERIFICATION. The initials were P.P.—Pike's initials. Mara ran her finger along the faded marks. The sheriff had intercepted a warning that might have saved her father.
Mrs. Bellamy set down her dough. “You ladies have a gentleman waiting across the street,” she said. “Gray coat. He has passed the window three times.”
Ada went still. Mara shut the register. A narrow staircase climbed to the rooms above, but the only exit from the upper floor faced the same street. Mrs. Bellamy glanced toward the kitchen garden. “There is a coal chute,” she said. “You will ruin your skirts.”
“Skirts can be washed,” Mara replied.
They wrapped the book again and crawled through the chute into a yard where hens scattered in outrage. Ada caught her sleeve before they reached the gate. “I cannot leave the station unattended for long. Take the register. Go to the county clerk, not the sheriff.”
“Come back with me,” Mara urged. “You can testify in Red Willow.”
“I will, but first I must secure the dispatch records. If Mercer learns they exist, he will burn the whole building to destroy them.” Ada pressed a small iron key into Mara's palm. “Locker seventeen at the station. If I disappear, there are duplicates inside.”
A shout rose from the boardinghouse. Someone had discovered the empty parlor. Mara climbed a fence and landed in a muddy lane. She heard footsteps behind her, then the sharp crack of a cane striking brick. Mercer had guessed their route.
She ran toward the market, forcing herself not to look back. Wagons stood wheel to wheel beneath canvas awnings. A teamster cursed when she slipped between his horses. Mara apologized without slowing. At the far end of the square she found a livery stable and paid a boy to saddle the quickest horse he owned.
“That's a hired mare, ma'am,” he protested. “She don't know you.”
“She'll know I'm frightened,” Mara said, and swung into the saddle.
She rode out by the river road, taking the longer route that avoided the sheriff's patrol. Only when the town lay behind the cottonwoods did she open the packet again. A loose slip had fallen from the register, too narrow to be an official form. In Samuel's handwriting were four words and a number: NORTH SPILLWAY. THIRD STONE. 1869.
Mara read them twice. Her father had not merely discovered a fraud. He had left instructions for finding something, and he had expected that somebody might survive to follow them.
By twilight she reached the Ellison ranch. Jonah met her at the gate, his face tight with anger and relief. Elias stood behind him, holding the roan mare's reins. Neither man spoke until Mara climbed down.
“I know,” she said before Jonah could accuse her of lying. “I should have told you where I was going.”